March 3. Sicily, Italy

Today our cruise wasn't scheduled to get into port in Sicily until noon. We slept in and had breakfast delivery scheduled to our room. We watched from our balcony as the picturesque coastline came into view and we docked. 

We docked in Messina, Sicily's third largest city, population of 200,000.(Palermo is first with a million people.)

 

 

I scheduled us on an all day small group tour through Viator to Castelmola and Taormina. They were about an hour away from Messina, but provided more history and what you imagine of Italian seaside cities. Messina was wiped out by two tsunamis in 1908 caused by an earthquake under the water in the straight between the mainland and Messina.

Our guide, Mariarita was an over the top personality who was a delight. On our hour ride she told us history, random factoids, and gave us classic almond cookies. I was expecting them to be hard, but they were soft and tasty.

 

Also as we were driving we could see Mt. Etna in the distance among the clouds. That was a cool sight. It fogged up later in the day so we couldn't see it from our stops unfortunately.

After some driving back and forth up the mountainside we made it to our first stop, Castelmola. It is a small village (population about 1,100) that hovered high over the mountainside and seascape below. Mariarita walked us around the main square and told us it was built in 1078 by the Normans. She told some funny stories... that the flowerpots are all heads because a man was romancing a Sicilian woman and ... the next morning the man told her he had to go back to his wife... so she cut off his head and put it in the garden. She also showed us the "Penis Bar" where everyone was getting shots of the almond wine in penis shot glasses and you keep the glass... It was a small town, but had beautiful streets and alleyways.

 

 

 

We then made our way down the mountainside to Taormina, originally a Greek settlement from 4 B.C. It is so very interesting seeing places that are so, so old but are now so fancy... the Four Seasons from the second season of White Lotus was filmed here. We got the Sicily specialties arancino rice ball specialties and traditional cannoli. 

 

 

 

 

We got back on the ship late, after 7pm. Since it was Taco Tuesday, we headed to the Taco restaurant onboard. It was all you can eat and they brought so much delicious food... We had then to stop after they brought nachos, five different kinds of tacos, two different burritos, three different quesadillas... plus chips and guac... they said we still had two types of enchiladas... we couldn't eat them! A great end to a great day!